Undefined Behaviour ch2 [draft 0.0.1]

Chapter::Encapsulation

How did I meet Violet?

Well.

Let me take you back to the monthly Glasgow Leatherdykes pub night. This would be about two years before she disappeared, at a kind of arcade-themed bar on Drury Street. More or less a regular bar at ground level—high ceiling, industrial sort of vibe with metal pillars and such. Big trans and Palestine flags on the wall, which is always appreciated.

On that night, all sorts of trans (mostly) girls (mostly) had found whatever articles of leather clothing and colourful symbolic handkerchiefs they might have about the house to gather here for bootblacking, arm wrestling, hooking up, and for a few of them, the pool tables next door. A novice in the ways of Glasgow, I was a little nervous. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t own anything made of leather, but I’d heard it was the place to be.

As it turned out, I was right!

“So, it’s all moving data around at the end of the day. You have this big chunk of numbers in memory, like toothpaste, which you squeeze into the GPU to tell it where to put the triangles. There’s not really a 3D space.” I was saying.

“Damn, I see.” said Violet. Both of us were speaking loudly to cut through the blanket of conversation enveloping us.

I was certainly a little drunk, on the hope it might shield me from sensory overload. Violet, for her part, was sipping apple juice, occasionally taking a cold chip from a basket on the table. I would later learn she always went for apple juice. Violet was by no means absolutely sober, but her substances of choice were more in the area of LSD. She had no taste for alcohol, and seemed to find it a little embarassing.

I laughed awkwardly. “Sorry, it’s, uh, special interest stuff. I can stop.”

“Bitch, I am genuinely interested. This is my genuinely interested face. Should I do more aizuchi or something?” She stuck her tongue out. I think that may be when I fell in love with her, but it took a little while to confirm.

“Did any of what I said make sense? I can never tell whether I’m too deep in it.”

“Well, it’s basically Kant, right? Phenomena vs noumena. The pixels are like the phenomena and the numbers are like the thing-in-itself.” Violet took another sip of juice with an impish expression.

“I don’t know much about Kant but I think that sounds about right.” I giggled. “Thing-in-itself sounds like an innuendo, doesn’t it? Like ‘I’d put her thing in itself’…” I blushed.

“Isn’t that basically bottom surgery?” Thankfully, she seemed more amused than anything. “Penis eversion, in other words.”

“Yes, eversion! Hey, did you ever play that? You know the platformer where… you know. It goes all gooey and lovecrafty when you press a button.”

“I was picturing ‘how to turn a sphere inside out’, but yes, I played Eversion. Deep cut.”

“I gotta know about games…” I nodded to myself. “Gotta know all the games. So I can make new games that people didn’t already make.”

“Quite an undertaking.”

“Yeah…” I turned to face her, I dread to imagine what my expression must have been. “It’s sooooo much work to make a game. You have no idea. Every little thing takes foreverrrrr.”

“You like it, though?”

I nodded, vigorously. “Would be a daft thing to do if I didn’t like it. Not like it pays.”

Violet gave an amused snort. “Bitch, you actually have a salary, right? Try living off tips and zines for a while.”

“Noooo.” I stared at her. “Nooo. Your zines are so good though! You know, I was reading your stuff before I even came to Glasgow.”

“Shit, you were?” This broke through Violet’s cynical air. She looked genuinely surprised.

“Yeah! When I heard you were up here it was like oh fuck wow I might actually meet her.”

“Damn, I’ve never had a fan.” Violet shook her head. “Hope I’m living up to it.” I blushed at that and she burst out laughing. “What’s your name, anyway, graphics girl?”

“It’s, uh…” I found myself blushing more. “It’s Indigo. I kind of named myself after you, actually. I never thought it would be, like, a thing.” Aagh.

“Damn, holy shit. Well, I’m incredibly flattered.” Aaagh!

“But yeah, so.” I had no idea what to say and I definitely wasn’t confident enough at that point to try and kiss her or anything, so I decided to go back to the firm ground of infodumping about computer graphics. “The numbers aren’t the thing-in-itself either, right? ‘Numbers’ are just an interpretation we put on bit patterns. And that’s just an interpretation of electrons in the silicon.”

“Turtles.” Violet put her glass down so she could place one hand on another and made a wiggly thumb motion.

“Yeah, turtles all the way down, and we keep putting more turtles on top, as well…”

“So if anything,” Violet says, “the actual thing we’re interested in is the way the turtles fit together on each level? That’s the thing that makes them turtles, as opposed to, I dunno…”

“Likely dog. Behold, dog.”

Violet grinned. “Dog ahead. Try finger but hole.” On the other side of the table, a passing girl in a dog collar turned to wink at us and and we both lost it.

“But you have to know what the turtle is standing on…” I said after I’d managed to recover my composure. “Because they’re leaky abstraction turtles.”

“What are you two on about? Turtles taking a leak?” The girl in the collar had apparently taken an interest, and settled on the other side of the table. She was dressed very sharply, leather vest and curly hair swept to the side, tattoos collaging up her arms.

“This is Indigo. Computer graphics nerd.” Violet said. “Hey, Indigo, this is Magenta.”

“Just Maggie is fine! So, you’re new in Glasgow?” Her accent was hard to place, but it did not sound Scottish.

“I’ve been here a few months.” I called back. “Up from Bath.”

She mimed bathing with a raised eyebrow.

“No,” I said. “It’s a city!”

“Oh? Where’s that, then?”

“England. The Southwest.”

Maggie tutted in mock-disapproval. Violet cracked up. “She’s from London.” she said to me. “Absolutely no foot to stand on here.”

“Yeah, well.” Maggie gave an exaggerated shrug. “I dunno. How’re you finding Scotland?”

“I like it a whole lot better! But, uh, honestly a whole lot of bad shit happened in Bath.” I hoped that came off in a suitably ‘don’t ask’ way. “So it’s a chance to start over. Knowing how the world works a bit more.” Both girls nodded seriously.

“Yeah, that’s real. So what’s all this about pissing turtles, anyway?” She pulled up a chair opposite and I noticed she was indeed flagging yellow.

Someone in a harness walked by behind her and scratched her head, followed by a slightly taller someone in a full latex dress who stopped briefly to blow a kiss to Violet. I tried to remember their faces.

“Ehe, well.” I scratched my jaw. “I dunno if it’s as exciting as you think. We were talking about abstractions. So you know, the turtles on turtles metaphor.”

“Huh.” Maggie seemed to consider this for a moment. “So kinda like, abstract art and stuff?”

“I, um, hmm.” I glanced at Violet. “Does that count?”

“Well. I think so, actually.” Violet looked at me thoughtfully. “Like, you’re talking about how in computers, you can abstract over the details of the lower levels, right?”

“Yeah!” I said, trying to make myself heard. “As long as it obeys the rules, the implementation could be electronics or microfluidics, ARM or x86, Linux, Windows…”

“Right.” she said. “So in abstract art, like visual art, you’re kind of taking the process –” Her words were swallowed by a cheer from the table behind us. Someone had won an arm wrestling match.

“Say that again?”

“I said, you’re taking the process of perception, and you’re hiding the details! Of, you know, what you’re perceiving!”

“Huh!” My brain worked to parse out her words. “Yeah! I guess you’ve got shape, texture, line, colour… but not trying to relate those to some physical object that has that texture. Just the elements themselves.”

“And, you said the abstractions leak, right?”

“Uh, yeah!”

“So in abstract art, what would that be? The texture of the canvas and brushstrokes?”

“That’s not really specific to abstract art, though, is it? Like, like… you usually can tell if a picture was made with 3DCG, or digital painting, or watercolour. Whatever is in it.”

Maggie was looking between us, her expression somewhere between exasperation and fascination. “God, I fucking love trans women.”

Violet laughed loudly. “This one really brings it out in me!” I beamed.

“Why don’t we go upstairs where it’s a bit quieter!?” Maggie said.

I hit the bathrooms on the way. ‘A trans woman pissed on me here’ proclaimed one person’s hand; ‘nice’ was written in another underneath. Another line, repeated across multiple walls, accused an unfamiliar name of being a rapist. ‘Free Palestine!’ sat a few tiles away from ‘support trans rights or take jaggy shites’; on the opposite wall was declared the Bolivarian Republic of Strathclyde.

We were at the internal balcony, overlooking the whole room as it surged with horny nerds (girl type). It was, to my relief, a bit easier to hear myself think.

“Well.” Maggie said. “OK, fine, you’ve got me. Abstract art. How does it ‘leak details’?” She looked at me expectantly.

“I guess the abstraction would have to fail in some way.” I said. “Like, if we’re saying we’re abstracting over the relation between perception and objects, if the shapes in your abstract piece kinda look like something, then it’s leaking the fact that our visual system evolved to perceive objects?”

“Isn’t that what makes a lot of abstract art work, though? Like, it kinda looks like lots of different things, so you try to figure it out.” Maggie was getting caught up in it too.

“Huh…” Violet said. “So the part that leaks is, in a way, the interesting part.”

“Now you’re talking.” Maggie said. Violet cackled.

“But I’m not sure that’s right.” I said. “In computers, you build stuff out of the formal elements of the level below. The ‘abstractions’ of abstract art are abstracting over brushstrokes and stuff. To make shapes and lines and all that.”

Violet nodded. “That’s fair. So we were barking up the wrong tree saying it abstracts over representative art?”

“Woof.” said Maggie. We looked at her. She made a little doggie paw gesture.

“Well, yeah. It’s abstract because it’s about the elements of a formal system.” I said. “So I guess representative art is the next level up, where you use that formal system to do something else. But abstract art is about the formal system itself. The ‘programming language’. It’s like code golf, or a really nice algorithm.”

Maggie burst out laughing. “You really are a STEM girlie. But yeah, OK, I think I get what you’re on about now.”

“So, what’s your thing?” Maggie said. Violet had gone back downstairs to pick us up some drinks.

“Like, what do I do? Or like, what kind of sex I’m into?”

“Whichever! Tell me about you!”

“Welllll. I’m a game dev, and 3D artist.” It seemed like the safer option. “And kind of, um, a sakubuta.”

“A what?”

“Well, it’s, uh, –”

“It’s like a super weeb. Like level 100.” Violet abruptly reappeared behind me, placing two glasses on the table.

“…ok, so I mean the neutral way to say it is ‘sakuga fan’.” I could only stay the course. “But ‘sakubuta’ is like, a derogatory term from Japanese imageboards that people use ironically. It’s kind of a corner of anime fandom, that’s all about the craft of animation, and, um, specific animators.”

“Like I said!” Violet patted me on the head, and disappeared to get her apple juice. Maggie watched with amusement.

“She really likes you.” Maggie took a sip of her drink with a satisfied expression. “Love to see it, honestly.”

“I hope I’m not weirding her out. I’ve been obsessed with her writing since forever. And now I’m here, banging on about, you know.” I fidgeted.

“Oh, no wonder then. She’s been dying for someone to actually dig into her stuff.”

“Huh.” I contemplated this for a moment. “I thought it would be really popular.”

“I mean, people think it’s cool. But she writes a lot. And I always get this feeling like, people aren’t quite picking up on what she’s trying to say.”

I thought about my demoscene projects. “That’s a mood.”

Maggie shrugged. “Honestly, I think she sweats it too much. She writes great stuff. I really liked that one she did with the atoll.”

“Wait, which atoll one? There’s like three! The psychedelic one with the monastery, the really upsetting one with the selkies, the one that’s like a Shintaro Kago type of thing with all the body parts getting swapped, and, oh–”

Maggie was laughing. “No doubt about it,” she said. “You are the real Violet fan.”

“Heh…” But which one did she mean? Agh.

“How about you?” I said, trying not to show too much more of my obsession. “What’s your, uh, thing?”

Maggie fiddled with the colourful handkerchiefs in her back pocket, and shrugged. “Well, I play music! And run some of the events round here.”

“Oh shit, what do you play?”

“Anything with a keyboard, pretty much. But I’ve got an old Moog analogue synth at home, I really like that.”

“Whoah, like Wendy Carlos used to use?”

Maggie got a horrific glint in her eye as she learned forwards. I heard a groan behind me; Violet, back with her apple juice.

“Oh no. Maggie won’t shut up about Wendy Carlos. You don’t know what you’ve done…” She scooted in between us.

“Well, yeah, obviously I like Wendy Carlos.” Maggie said. “But I like trans music in general, to be honest. Trannies just do it better. You just gotta respect your foremothers and all that.”

Violet looked impishly at me. “Here she goes.”

“Hold on.” I said. “Trans music? Don’t we do almost anything? Like, I know there are really stereotypically trans genres like breakcore, hyperpop, noise… But that’s just kind of ‘recent electronic music’.”

“Sure.” Maggie said. “But those are really autistic genres, right? Textured.”

“Hmm.”

She waved it away. “It’s probably bullshit. But I like to think about it.”

“I think I get you.” I said. “I think of, you know, Lynn Conway, Sophie Wilson. They probably didn’t make computer architecture in an inherently trans way or whatever, but it makes me feel good to think we’ve always been like this…”

“Hey, you know what!” Violet said suddenly, looking between us. “Rachel Pollack had a bit about oldschool trans hackers in one of her books. ‘Cross-gendered computer outlaws’ is how she put it, I think?” She started fiddling with her phone.

“I’ve never been much good with computers.” Maggie pouted.

“Didn’t you literally just say you make music with modular synths or whatever?”

She laughed and raised her hands. “I’m fine with analogue shit! That’s vibes!”

“Hey, I’ve got it.” Violet zoomed on an image on her phone, a passage from a novel. I read: I don’t know what it is about computers and gender people, maybe something to do with changing realities. I looked down a bit. Annie-O and her people considered what they did to be a sacred obligation, opening tunnels between the virtual world and the physical. On another line, Annie suggested the narrator’s inability to find her way in virtual worlds was the hallmark of a fixed gender.

“Wow, how did you find that?”

“Hey.” Maggie said. “She says I’m bad about Wendy Carlos, but you get her started on Rachel Pollack one day.”

“She was the fucking GOAT.” Violet said. “I wish I could have met her…”

“Come over here, Indigo.” I scooted my chair closer to Violet. She patted her lap. I opened my mouth, closed it, and scooted up there. On the other side of Violet, Maggie watched with an affectionate expression.

I could feel Violet’s breath on my neck and shoulder.

She wrapped her arms around me, keeping me stable. I was suddenly very warm.

“I don’t wanna take advantage of you being my fan and all that.” Violet said quietly, near my ear. “But you are super fucking cute, you know that right?”

I stammered some syllables along the lines of people have told me some nice things so I guess maybe.

“No, you have to say it.” Violet said. “No hedging. No citations. Tell me you are fucking cute and you know it.”

“OK,” I said. “Um. I am fucking cute and I know it.”

“Again, like you actually mean it.”

“Right.” I said. “Sure. I am fucking cute, and I know a lot about computer graphics and drawings of anime girls, so I know a lot about cuteness and I’m pretty sure I’m that.”

Maggie nearly spat out her drink.

“Good girl.” said Violet. “Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

I was not.

Ten years later, I was sat on Violet’s lap again, looking at a database of patients.

The lap thing hadn’t entirely been planned, but Violet had the security clearance to look at the patient database. I probably shouldn’t be seeing it. But she wanted to show me. And there was not a lot of room to see the screen without sitting in her lap. That had to be the only reason she asked me. It had been ten years, after all.

I saw Magenta’s name. Not, as I’d half expected, her deadname. Apparently the mysterious multinational conglomerate that was funding this place was a stickler for respecting trans people. Probably something to do with Su-ni. I still wasn’t quite sure what her deal was—either trans herself or some kind of ultra-chaser. But I couldn’t think about that.

“Maggie…”

After Violet had disappeared, Maggie had been hit about as hard as me. But for her, it was just the start of some very, very bad years. Surgical complications, a bad breakup with someone who’d been caring for her, and family shit, all piled on top of each other every time it seemed like she could catch a break. It had seemed like she was finally coming out of the tunnel, but then abruptly she disappeared too, leaving a note which said her body was unlikely to be found. I couldn’t bring myself to be mad at her for it.

“She came here?”

“Yes.” Violet said. “Before they woke me up. I don’t know how they reached her.” She opened up a file: a scanned contract, in which Maggie had apparently agreed to undergo a medically induced coma and experimental neurosurgery. Legally nonsense, of course, that’s not something you’re allowed to consent to. But I got the impression the law didn’t matter very much down here.

“That’s really fucked up.” I didn’t know what else to say. I had agreed to be part of this… whatever the hell this was. “She can’t revoke consent if she’s in a coma.”

“I know.” Violet said. “I do know that, Indigo! But… I mean, she would have done, you know. Anyway.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t. She was doing better.” I wasn’t sure I believed this myself, and Violet did not dignify it with a response. “So… this is supposed to be a way to save her?”

“People kill themselves,” Violet said, “for a whole lot of reasons. But one description that strikes a chord with me is that they just can’t imagine any sort of future anymore. So, this way, we can flush the context and put them into another world entirely. An afterlife, in a way.”

“If they can even wake her up from the coma. There’s got to be something less drastic.”

“The tech’s come on a long way.” Violet said. “Nearly always, they can.”

I made a doubtful noise, and shifted awkwardly. “Fine. Who else? Of people I’d know.”

Violet scrolled through the database but I didn’t let myself look at the screen. I couldn’t help but feel that this wasn’t for me to see.

“You knew Amaranth, right?” she said. “Same terms as Maggie. She’s already in the sim. And, oh, Helio! You two were super tight, right?”

I grimaced. “Heliotrope and I… had a real falling out. About two months before she did it. It’s weighed on me ever since.”

“Well.” Violet said. “She fucked it up. She’s one of the ones who got here ‘naturally’, from the hospital.”

“Fucking hell, Violet.”

She folded her arms round me again. “Aren’t you glad?”

“I’m… this is just a lot to take in. And Yeong-Mi said it’s not guaranteed, right? I don’t want to get my hopes up and grieve them twice.”

“That’s not it, though, is it?” She could be so vexaciously perceptive at times like this.

“Right.” I said. “I guess I’m thinking, well, what do you say? Someone killed themselves, or close as. You play all these conversations in your head, things you wish you’d said or done together, ways you might have helped. You tell yourself that they’re at peace, somewhere. But it’s just, you know, a simulacrum. Your idea of them. Your brain’s way of making piece with the sudden hole in the world. What do you say when they come back?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Violet said. “You’re outside and they’re inside. You don’t have to say a single thing, if you don’t want to.”

“I should, though, right?”

“Oh, Indigo. There is no ‘should’ about this. Do you think any ethics board would approve this shit? But you’re here, you’re not running to the cops.”

“You know I would never, right?” I said. “I don’t know that anything you’re doing here is right. But it would be even more wrong to destroy it.”

“Mm.” Violet said. “I thought you’d see it that way.”

She rested her head on my shoulder, just like she used to, and I felt myself beginning to cry once more.

“So how does this tech even work? Like, I know how to render to a screen or a VR headset. But we’re piping this right into their eyeballs? And what about touch and all that?”

It was, in some ways, like my very first tech meeting at any other job. I was glad to be in it, though. If I could fill my brain up with programming, I wouldn’t have to think any more about the big picture.

“Well, right now it won’t be so different from what you’re used to.”

The speaker had been introduced to me as Xander; an older trans guy, heavy-set with a bushy beard. I only knew he was trans because of the multiple trans flags and pronoun labels mixed in with the array of colourful badges down his suspenders. Otherwise I could have mistook him from any of the old white programmer guys I’d have seen at a demoparty. He was, I’d been informed, the Biointerface Engineering Technical Lead. Hell of a title!

“Basically,” he continued, “we’ve set it up so you can use standard XR rendering APIs for visual stuff. Project each camera like usual, our stack will handle the mapping to optical nerve signals. As for touch and such, well, why don’t you explain, Heather?”

Heather was an alarmingly tall transfem enby, Black, xer hair cut in neat short locs, and big round glasses to complete the librarian look. Xe was at least a head taller than me, and I’m already pretty tall. Probably the youngest person I’d seen at the company, though it’s always hard to tell with trans people. I had only stumbled on the xe/xer pronouns once so far, and I intended to practice later to make sure there wasn’t a second time.

Did this company hire any cis people?

“Right.” Heather said. “Yeah, so, touch, proprioception, that’s my department. We intercept the spinal nerves with electrodes where they spread out, that turned out to be the optimal place for substitution with the sort of electrodes we have. From the game engine side, you’re gonna have a bunch of animation bones for proprio, and a bunch of special textures which are kind of like, a force map over the skin. We’ve been kind of experimenting with different sensations there, training neural nets to improve the mapping of what gets through and so on. It has to be a bit custom for each person but we’ve figured out a standard API, I can walk you through it later!”

Violet elbowed me. “Pretty fucking cool, right?”

I frowned. “It’s crazy. Couldn’t you really hurt someone if it goes wrong? Like what happens if there’s a NaN in there?”

“We’ve mostly ironed that out.” Heather looked a little guilty. “You’re right, the first patients had a bad time. But now inputs get clamped really hard. If there’s any sort of feedback we squash it.”

“Well, that’s good you’ve solved it, I guess…” I didn’t want to imagine what happened when someone had every nerve input saturate. I’m sure the military would love it, though. “God, what sort of hardware is this running on?”

“Basically every player gets their own rig, roughly a decent gaming PC.” Yeong-mi sat across the table, ticking items off on her fingers. “Pretty high-end stuff, lots of VRAM to play with, but we’ve got a lot more pixels to push than a normal game. On top of that, there’s an authoritative server for each area. Latency is great, because everyone’s in the same building. But we still predict everything on-device because you really cannot afford any lag in this kind of situation.”

“Wow.” Given the cost of life support and surgery, I supposed the computers wouldn’t even be the expensive part of this operation. “Seems like you have this worked out pretty well already. What’s my role in it?”

“Well.” Xander said. “You’ve got to make our rendering stack good enough that people won’t go crazy–”

“What he means is, what worked in 202X,” Violet interrupted, “or even now, is not good enough when you’re living inside it. It’s uncanny. All the hacks that you make in a game…”

“Fuck, it would be awful.”

“Right. We have to make it all work together. When you look at something up close, the detail needs to be there. When you touch a surface, it should feel right. Clothing. Water. All the hard stuff.”

“And after what happened to TSMC last year…” I looked across the room. “We’re pretty much stuck on current hardware, right?”

“Yeah.” Yeong-mi grimaced. “It’s like you said a few months back. Moore’s law isn’t coming down from heaven to save us anymore. We have to make do with what we’ve got.”

“I didn’t think that would apply to, well, something like this…”

“So what’s her deal, anyway?” I asked Violet. “Su-ni.”

We were in the cafeteria, upstairs, in what was some clearly sort of regular office building. A sign listed the businesses in the building; upstairs was some sort of community film studio. I was sure they had no idea what was going on below their feet. It was reasonably busy, and the overlapping conversations helped provide a wall against getting overheard. Even so, I spoke quietly, leaning across the table towards Violet.

“Well.” she said. “It’s like this. She’s an early transitioner. Her mum and dad are trillionaires or something. Like, they’re at the top of one the chaebol. And she’s an only child, and her parents were weirdly cool about it all so when her egg cracked she basically got whatever she wanted.”

“Huh.” I processed this. “So she is trans, then? I had sorta wondered given that like, you know, I haven’t seen one cis person since I went down there.”

Violet snorted, rolled her eyes. “Yeah. That’s by design. Like, you can ask her about this yourself, but she had a real personal crisis about getting to ride above it all like that. Especially when she came over here. So she’s made a point of hiring other trans people, paying for hormones and all that.”

“And also making her own personal sorta zoo or cult or whatever for us…”

“I mean, if you want to see it that way.” Violet shrugged. “I think she’s cool. I’m sure I’d be doing something insane like this if I had her sort of money.”

“There’s no way this is completely under the radar, though, right?” I couldn’t let go of it. “Like, that much money moving around, all these surgeons getting involved.”

“Well.” Violet said. “It is officially known as a research hospital. Just, a lot of patients are undocumented. The actual hospital part is across the river. I’m sure she’s got people doing real creative accounting to cover this all up.”

“Still, sounds like we’re on borrowed time. What do we do if the cops show up?”

“Honestly, Indigo? I don’t know.” She pursed her lips. “Su-ni says there’s contingencies in place. But as far as I’m concerned, we just make it work as long as we can.”

“Indeed.” The voice came from behind me. I turned. Su-ni was there, apparently happy to come up here in her absurd cosplay outfit. “Don’t worry, Ms. Indigo. I have security in hand.”

I scooted to the side to make space for her to sit down. She obliged.

“Um, hi!” I said. “Sorry. I’m a bit of a worrier.”

“Don’t stop on my account.” An amused smile played on her face. “It’s good to question everything, Ms. Indigo. You are absolutely right. This whole thing is shady, and a rich woman’s mad folly.”

“I didn’t say that…”

“But you were thinking it, weren’t you? Everyone does. The only proof I can offer is the results we’ve already achieved.”

Violet giggled. “I’m results.” I rolled my eyes. Yeah, she hadn’t changed that much.

“Why go to such lengths, though?” I asked Su-ni. “I mean, I’m glad you liked the game and everything, but…”

“Ms. Indigo, I did not simply like the game.” She looked at me severely. “Do not underestimate your accomplishment. TRISMEGISTUS was a revelation. It made clear that I was wasting my one, only life.”

“Surely you’ve played other deeply immersive RPGs? Games that moved you the same way? I mean, there’s Disco Elysium right there.”

“Disco Elysium was a profound game. And so are many others. But they did not reach me the way your game did.” She took a deep breath. “Do not mistake my project here for pure benevolence, Ms. Indigo. I am, at heart, a selfish woman. I came to Scotland to save Ms. Violet, after her accident. And I did so because she could give me something I wanted—something I could not get anywhere else.”

I stared at her, trying to make sense of these baffling pronouncements. She watched me, severe and impassive as ever. I felt… angry. Yeah.

“Ms. Su-ni.” I said. “I know you are my new boss and this is my first day, but I have to be frank.”

“Please.” The ghost of a smile.

“Are you actually nuts!? It’s just a game. Make-believe. I love Violet’s writing as much as anyone, but none of it is real.” I bit back the last, trying to keep my voice in check. Dropped to a near whisper. “You’ve tied everyone up in this whole thing, real people, to risk us all going to prison or worse. Done these experiments on actual, living people. Couldn’t you just have bought us out? Found another game to lose yourself in?”

“Indigo.” Violet said. “Think for a second. Do you think that chair you’re sitting on is real?”

I groaned. “Look, yeah, I get the philosophy and all…”

“Do you?” She reached across the table, and gripped my hand tightly. “That chair exists in your mind, Indigo. ‘Really’ it’s quarks, electrons, quantum fields, whatever. None of that knows it’s a chair. We say it’s a chair because we trust they will act as a chair.”

“Yes, it’s the phenomena! I understand about the fucking phenomena!” I saw someone on another table turn their head, and bit my tongue. “Can we continue this somewhere else?”

We stood in the lift, me and Su-ni at one end, Violet’s wheelchair at the other, as it descended back to what I was increasingly thinking of as a sorcerer’s dungeon. Both of them were looking at me.

“People didn’t like our game because it was a perfect simulation of another world.” I said into the silence. “They liked it because of your writing, Violet, and the art team’s designs, and all of that work we did… it told a story. They could fill in the rest themselves. You know, willing suspension of disbelief. Make-believe play. How are we going to have any of that here? If everyone’s just some random person plucked off the streets of Glasgow, they’re not going to roleplay Maude the Anchoress or Chairman Oberon or the Garrulous Unterbaron or whoever. This team doesn’t seem all that big. We’d never churn out content patches fast enough.”

“They are not.” Violet said. “We’ve had to pick some people to play the vital characters. But more importantly, the rules of the world are what they are. If we do our jobs right, what emerges from that will be something new and rich.”

“Then how is it TRISMEGISTUS!? Your writing made that game, Violet. If Su-ni wants a sequel so badly—”

“Ms. Indigo.” Su-ni placed a hand on my arm. I flinched slightly. “I am grateful to hear your feelings and I hope you will continue to be just as forthright with me. However… I said I came to Scotland to save Ms. Violet. I did not say I simply wanted a sequel to TRISMEGISTUS.”

“Hey.” I turned to look at her, still riding the wave of annoyance. “OK. Thanks for not firing me immediately, I guess. Why do you keep calling us ‘Ms.’?”

She laughed. “It’s an affectation, obviously. Roleplaying. You’re not an idiot, Indigo. I do it to remind you that I am your grandiose, megalomaniac boss, and not your buddy like Violet—Ms. Violet—here. So let’s not forget ourselves.”

“Indigo.” Violet said quietly. “The TRISMEGISTUS thing was my idea. I convinced her to do it.”

“Oh.”

The lift reached the basement with a soft ‘ping’.

“Why don’t you take the afternoon off?” Su-ni said. “You too, Violet. This has been an emotional day for both of you.”

Violet had a room on the premises. I suppose that made sense. She was, supposedly, a patient at the research hospital. As hospital rooms went, it was more like a fancy hotel. Double bed, fresh sheets, beautiful view of the Clyde under a steely sky—though the bank of monitoring equipment, currently inactive, broke the spell a little.

I settled in an armchair as Violet shifted out of her chair onto the bed. It seemed she was not completely unable to walk, but it didn’t look easy. She unclipped a blood pressure cuff, folded it round her arm with practiced motions, and pressed the button. A hiss; the cuff inflated. She rested against the headboard.

“You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.” she said, sounding a whole lot more exhausted than she had at lunch.

“Do you want me to leave?” I held my hand out towards my bag.

“No. No, I just…” She looked over at the window. “I don’t get to leave. So I thought… I didn’t want to make you a prisoner, too.”

“They don’t let you go outside?”

“It’s more like… I can’t really go anywhere on my own. Sometimes I just… it’s kinda like epilepsy. Or my arms just stop working. Or, you know, I switch out and I’m the other guy for a while and things get really confusing.”

“Fuck…”

Violet continued, the words seeming to come out in a flood. “They did it better for the later patients. At some point they’ll swap out my chips too. But, I think Su-ni wants them to iron out the procedure first. It definitely wasn’t her idea for them to operate on me so early. She was really mad about it, actually, that’s kind of where the situation with her family –”

“Hang on, hang on, slow down.” I love a good infodump, but this was a bit much. “Go back a minute, Violet. Did you say the operation made you plural?”

Violet shook her head. “I’ve always been plural, silly.” She paused. “I mean. Since I was a kid anyway.”

“Oh, fuck. You never told me…” Had I come across like I’d be prejudiced or something?

“I would’ve. But. Well, when we were together, I hadn’t been Char in ages.”

“Char? As in like, Char Aznable introject!?”

“Oh my fucking god, no.” Violet wheezed with laughter. “Fuck! That would be amazing. Nah, it’s short for Chartreuse.”

“Your alter is named Chartreuse? You’re pulling my leg.”

“No. I’m serious. You’re the graphics programmer, you figure it out.”

“Wait, is that like, the inverse of violet? Kind of a yellowish green?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s… wow, I don’t know what to say about that. Which one of you named yourself first? Or was it like a mutual thing?”

“Well. Originally he was like, my deadname, like, you know it right?” I nodded. “But then I became Violet and he didn’t wanna be that anymore so he changed to be Chartreuse.”

“Huh.” I said. “Well, tell him I said hi, I guess.” The clock on the wall ticked for a minute. “How’s he with the trans thing?”

“Pretty chill.” Violet shrugged. “I think he IDs as a femboy or something. He can probably explain it. Anyway, he’s cool with hormones and all that.”

“So when they woke you up…”

“Char fronted for ages. I mean, I have memories from that period, but it doesn’t feel like it was me, you know? It’s like I was in a deep sleep, having a weird dream about doing muscle rehabilitation exercises.”

“Huh. Sounds like he didn’t get the fun part…”

A wan smile. “Yeah, he’s kinda mad about it honestly.”

I reached out and took her hand. “I can’t imagine what it was like.”

“From what they tell me, you haven’t exactly been having the easiest time of it either, Indigo.”

“Heh, well.” I stared at the white bedsheet. “I really have not. Should I ask about that ‘what they tell me’, Vivi? Have they been spying on me?”

“Nah, mostly they just asked Yeong-Mi a whole bunch of questions when they got her out of jail.”

“Huh. Didn’t think she’d be the type to blab.” Not that this was the cops, but still…

“She didn’t say a damn word until they brought me in to see her.”

“That’s something.” I looked back at her. She reached out and laid her hand on mine. I took a breath. “So… getting the old gang back together?”

“Nah.” Violet said. “Half of them aren’t even in the country. And those that are, well, Su-ni’s got that policy…”

“Trans only? Seems like a recipe for disaster, honestly. And kind of a shame for them to be left out of this.”

“Welll…” Violet sucked in her cheeks. “She doesn’t just hand out the hormones and stuff out of kindness. That’s obvious, right? We’ve all got a big interest in keeping this place secret. I mean, me more than most.”

“Surely she can’t think that she’s the only source of hormones?”

“It’s not just that. The people they saved from killing themselves. The hugbox aspect of this place. Obviously I’m not saying she’d pull the plug on a patient if their friend ratted us out. But like, if they found out about this place, who knows what would happen? Nobody wants to risk that.”

I looked at her, frown deepening. “Bound together in conspiracy. Like we’re already in another world…”

“Exactly.”

“Didn’t you write a story like that once?”

Violet shrugged. “Probably. You always had a better memory for them than I did.”

That struck me as terribly sad.

“Come cuddle me.” she said.

I hesitated for a moment. “Are we still…”

“I don’t care what we are. I just want cuddles.”

That seemed fair to me. I took off my shoes and pushed myself over to the bed, wriggled into the covers beside her. Her head found its way to my clavicle, and I massaged her neck and shoulder gently, the way she used to like it. Evidently she still did, because before long she was letting out a happy murmur. If she’d been a cat, I was quite sure she would be purring.

“Magic hands…” she murmured.

“Hm?”

“You’ve still got magic hands…”

The next morning, I woke up in bed with Violet. Where the hell else would I ever want to be?

We made our way downstairs. Yeong-mi and Heather were waiting as we entered the basement. The latter was holding a VR headset, and what I was fairly sure was a haptic feedback suit draped over one arm.

“Ready to go inside?”

“Yeah.” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

PaddingByte::Magenta

It’s some sort of forest. Quite pretty. And obviously not real. You raise your hands to your face, and you’re a little disappointed to see that they are still hands, not paws.

What is even the point of waking up in the afterlife and still being a human?

Your memories are pretty foggy. Hard to tell what’s a dream and what’s not. This does not feel like a dream, though. You scratch at your arm. The feeling is strangely muted, not real pain, but it’s definitely a solid, concrete feeling.

Someone is watching you from the edge of the clearing. You look closer. Two someones.

Their faces look stylised, not quite as you remember them, but you recognise them easily enough. Violet and Indigo.

Fancy that…

“How much do you remember?” It’s Indigo. In this world, she is even taller. Willowy. Her eyes are larger than they should be. Like one of the fairies in that damn game.

Oh, shit.

You’re starting to remember how you went out.

“So. I guess I’m still alive.” It’s hard to remember. All of your memories seem strangely distant, wrapped in some sort of dissociative haze. Drips of distant pain echoing through a cavern.

“Magenta. As agreed in October 202X, you have been maintained in a medically induced coma for seven years, and then participated in an experimental neurosurgery. I can report the operation has been successful, and as a result, you are now inside an experimental virtual world.” Violet, this time. Unlike Indigo’s body, she is a sort of floating amorphous mass, constantly shifting between different shapes, the world beyond refracting through her body. You vaguely recall these things. ‘Jellies.’ Inspired by some ancient webcomic.

Violet continues. “Right, that’s what the script requires me to say.” She glances over at Indigo. “In short, your nervous system has been rewired. Right now, you are in a virtual world based on TRISMEGISTUS. We’re trying to make it better than the outside one.”

Weird fucking dream. “Damn,” you say, “that’s crazy. Can I be a dog?”

There is a gap in your memory. That’s how it is with dreams. But now you’re a dog. Anthro dog.

You have some complaints, though. “I don’t think my paws are quite right. They’re too flexible.”

“Oh, I think we’re still using the finger softbody physics model, I’ll have that fixed in the next update.” Indigo is as earnest as she ever is, bless her.

“Sick.”

Canine locomotion takes some more iteration. Walking on digitigrade legs takes a little getting used to. But you practice running on all fours.

If this is a dream, it’s a weirdly long and detailed one. Violet comes to visit you occasionally. She asks you questions about dog people. “I’m going to have two different factions,” she’s saying. “They’ll be aligned with the fey. Some stayed with Oberon’s Seelie Court, and others joined Titania’s Unseelie Court in the rebellion. Does that sound good with you?”

“I don’t know.” you say. “I never really followed all the lore you made up. This rules, though.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll relay it to the others.”

You run into another dog person. They’re really struggling with the walking, so you get them to try some exercises you’d come up with. They introduce themselves as Brea, and you’re like, no way, Brea? Haven’t seen you in ages. Furmeet, right?

“Are we really in a virtual world like they said? Like a game?” Brea asks you.

The world has changed quite a bit since your awakening. At first, your paws would clip right through the grass. Now it folds down, and springs back up when you walk away. You can even feel it, or something like it.

It does seem kinda like a game.

“I guess, yeah. But mainly I’m just enjoying being a dog.”

You really want to hunt something, now you’re getting the hang of running. Unfortunately, the forest is rather lacking in animal life. And you can’t smell shit.

Indigo comes to visit. There’s someone with her. Incarnated as a homunculus made of lacquered reddish wood, trimmed everywhere with intricate carvings.

“This is Heather.” Indigo says. “How are you settling in?”

You tell her your desires.

“I told you we should have started on smells.” Heather says.

Indigo groans. “And I told you, that’s gonna take a whole complicated simulation. I wouldn’t know how to begin testing it.”

A gust of wind rustles the grass and trees around you. You can feel it, sort of. It doesn’t quite play through your fur, the way you think wind should. But you can feel which way it’s pushing, the coolness of the breeze.

“We’re simulating wind now, right?” Heather says. “I mean, not my area. But couldn’t you put smells on that?”

Indigo paces. “That’s just curl noise at the moment. Proper fluid sim is gonna take way more compute and there’s a bunch of issues we’ll have to figure out. But how does your smell API work again? Maybe we could just…”

Nerds.

You go for a run in the forest. No doubt they’ll figure it out.

The next day, there is an animal. A small, fluffy, round thing. Sorta like a cartoon sheep.

Pounce.

Blood particles spray in the air.

You can feel the force of it against your jaws, the softness of the creature’s fat and muscle pushing back. The weight of it.

Nice.

“This has been really amazing. I don’t know how it’s possible.”

“Thanks, Maggie. That really means a lot.” It’s Indigo come to visit you this time, her long faerie body curled up so she could sit on the roots of a tree. Her voice sounds strangely sad. You wonder what she smells like. Still not implemented.

You pad over and snuggle in next to her. She scratches behind your ears. At first it felt really strange to be touched there, but over time, you’ve gotten used to it. Brains are crazy.

But there is a question that’s been bugging you, now you’re pretty sure this is not, in fact, a dream.

“So…” you begin. Indigo shifts, tilting her wide-eyed face to look down at you. You don’t know how else to put it. “How do I log out?”

“Ah, well.”

Indigo’s face isn’t animated, but you can feel the anxiety in her body’s abrupt shift.

“Right now? …I’m afraid you can’t.”

FanWiki::MariLwyd

Mari Lwyd is an NPC spawn associated with the Unseelie Insurgents. It usually spawns in a Wassailing Squad, although lone Mari Lwyds may be seen in the Deepwoods. A special Mari Lwyd, called Ceffyl Dŵr’s Husband, can be found as a merchant in the Scurriers’ Market area.

Depending on the player’s faction reputation, Mari Lwyd may be friendly or hostile.

Appearance

Mari Lwyd appears as a horse skull with large eyes over its eye sockets, followed by a train of fabric. There are multiple variants decorated with different flowers and ribbons (see Gallery).

The Mari Lwyd NPC is inspired by a Welsh wassailing tradition.

Friendly Mari Lwyd

If the player is considered ‘respected’ by the relevant subfaction of the Unseelie Insurgents controlling the area, Mari Lwyd will greet the player with songs and offer a taste of the Wassailer’s Cauldron. This can impart a variety of either beneficial or detrimental effects. Usually, the player will receive two effects, but if the same effect is rolled both times, they will receive one effect with twice the strength. (See RNG Manipulation for ways to get specific effects from the Cauldron.)

Wassail of Seven-League Toes

Multiplies running speed by seven for the next 77 seconds. Be careful not to run into walls or you will take damage.

Wassail of the Looking-Glass

Reverses the player’s controls (movement and view) for 44 seconds. If this is rolled twice it cancels out.

Wassail of Unstillness

Applies a ‘motion amplification’ post-processing effect to the player’s view for 33 seconds, which makes the screen grey except for the trail of moving objects. This effect is disabled in VR mode.

Wassail of the Whale

The player can breathe underwater but drowns in air for the next 99 seconds. Usually this is fatal, but if a Mari Lwyd spawns near water, it is very useful for exploration. It is not clear why this is named after an air-breathing mammal.

Wassail of Foxes

Dogs will be hostile to the player. There is a +3% chance that the Wild Hunt will be active when entering an area. This effect lasts until the next rest.

Wassail of the Hearth

The player is immune to the effects of cold and gains a 20% hitpoint boost. However, the player is considered a medium heat source, so perishable food items in their inventory rot faster. This lasts until the next rest.

Wassail of Exchange

The player temporarily becomes a Mari Lwyd, and the Mari Lwyd takes on the player’s character model. While a Mari Lwyd, the player’s only actions are to sing, whinny, and to stop being a Mari Lwyd. If the player enters an indoor area while in Mari Lwyd form, they get the ‘pwnco’ achievement.

If the player has acquired a musical instrument such as the Barrow Carnyx, Homunculocordion or Catspaw Flute, playing a tune near the Mari Lwyd will ensure that one effect will be the Wassail of the Hearth. The other effect is still random.

Mari Lwyd dialogue

Many of the dialogues from Mari Lwyd are drawn from Welsh wassailing songs, but sometimes a Mari Lwyd will address the faerie civil war, generally in verse as well. These songs are tied to the overall state of the civil war. If Titania and Oberon have been killed, there is a special funeral song.

In 2030, during the pandemic, speedrunner Fandango held an ‘online wassail’ event in which fans of TRISMEGISTUS recorded their own versions of Mari Lwyd’s songs. The full, compiled song is included below.